Character Leveling Stats, New Video Game and WoW Forums, Blue Tweets, Blizzard Art

Armory Stats: Characters that reached Level 90 in Mists of Pandaria
It is finally time for Armory Stats to make a return! This week we decided to take a look at the percentage of characters that made it from being level 85 during the end of Cataclysm to level 90 today. These stats compare a sample of 6.7M characters from late 2012 and checks which players reached level 90 as of the first week of September. Keep in mind a few things before interpreting these stats:

Some characters that were leveled to 90 and then abandoned, so some of their profiles won't show up on armory. 95% of the profiles that we were able to access were played within the last two months.

Some characters are lost to name changes, realm transfers, and faction changes.

The absolute percentages here have little meaning because of those issues, so they should only be used for comparing one group to another.

The Cataclysm values used here were scaled using the MoP average and Cataclysm average, excluding the Death Knight value from the Cataclysm average calculation. Death Knights are excluded from the Cataclysm average because they are an outlier, as many people leveled them to 80 during WotLK and then abandoned them.

Cataclysm population standard deviation (excluding Death Knights) was 2.32%

Mists of Pandaria population standard deviation was 1.66%

We did the same thing during Cataclysm at a slightly earlier point in the expansion and you can find the results here.

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Class

Leveled to 85 in Cataclysm (Scaled)

Leveled to 90 in Mists of Pandaria

Death Knight

18.10%

23.68%

Druid

26.07%

25.56%

Hunter

25.81%

27.44%

Mage

26.76%

23.27%

Paladin

23.67%

24.72%

Priest

25.69%

25.49%

Rogue

20.92%

21.08%

Shaman

24.60%

24.29%

Warlock

24.18%

26.16%

Warrior

25.35%

25.04%

MMO-Champion - New Video Games and WoW Discussion Forums
It's time to expand a little more and add some more forums dedicated to other games, as well as expand the WoW forum section! We are adding (or expanding) these forums today:

Moderators:

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These new forums should give a little more freedom to the growing community on the Video Games forums and should make most of you happier. If you're not happy enough, you can probably find an answer to your angry questions below.

Why didn't you open a forum for [insert game here] when you opened one for [insert similar game here]??? [insult here]
We only opened forums for games that already have a lot of activity on the Video Games forum in the first place. If your game isn't here, it just means that we don't have a giant thread about it, because not enough people are interested yet.

I can't filter these new forums out of the Recent Forum Posts box on the front page!
We know about the issue with the forum filters not saving correctly, and it will be fixed this week. The new forums will also be added to the list then, so you can filter them out if you want.

Blue Tweets

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

PvPonly thing remaining for 2s to be "viable" is healer mana balancing and some class changes (most are coming in 5.4)
In 3s, you can generally assume a healer. Do we balance 2s around a healer or around 2 DPS? Big difference. (Source)

why isn't it possible to check your mmr or others for that matter?
Because it's a matchmaking tool, not a score or achievement players are intended to try and grind upwards. (Source)

how do you feel Pvp went this xpac? Do you have much say into decisions or leave that to holinka n team
Holinka is part of my team, so we make sure we are all on the same page. (Source)
I think the PvP ilevel change proved confusing and perhaps controversial. It was intended to make PvP gearing easier. (Source)
Prior to that, a new character (or alt) had a ton of work to do before they could even survive gearing. (Source)
But there were downsides, such as the optics of PvP ilevel being lower than PvE, and the effect on world PvP. (Source)
That's not the only thing I would mention as a PvP postmortem, but twitter's not the best medium for the discussion. (Source)Wouldn't it have been easier to simple reduce the cost the honor gear?
The biggest problem was between Honor and Conquest gear. So we would have needed to make the Conquest cheaper. (Source)
But if Conquest is too cheap, then there isn't much of a PvP season because people gear up and call it done. (Source)
Super high-end PvP players will keep playing to determine rank, but a lot of players finish once they're geared. (Source)

i'm not rushing into any conclusions but is it me or do i see the word "easier" over and over again?
It wasn't fun for players starting out PvP to get roflstomped over and over until they finally had decent gear. (Source)
"Easy" in this context meant less of a delta between Honor and Conquest gear. (Source)

Can Hunter's Please have Viper Sting back base mana drain ftw in pvp
Very unlikely. We found mana drain to be really unfun for the victims. (Source)mana drain is unfun? and what about CC? this is unfun too for the victims..
CC tends to last for short periods unless you're chained. Mana drain can mean a very long time. More CC counters too. (Source)
That's not to say CC design is perfect. However, the risk of less dominant CC is more dominant "blow him up" strategies. (Source)

2/2 2v2 has an audience without them still, but it wouldn't feel to me like you're giving it a real go again.
Yeah, that was our point. For a time we wanted to offer them but not really motivate players to try them. (Source)
But they still remain so popular, maybe we should just embrace 2s as a full feature. (Source)

Futureany chance of new 5 mans in the future? I'm casual and find LFR very tedious and dull. It killed my subscription alas...
We would like to provide more 5-player dungeons than we were able to do for MoP. (Source)

Can we get a audio slider for voices? Annoying wanting to hear dialogue but then being deafened by combat noises and spells :<
Yeah, that's a common request. It's on our list. (Source)

Hi, Greg. (Probably a question more for the animation team, but) will Hunters ever get quivers back as part of their models?
Yes, that is a goal. No ETA. (Source)

ever thought of having rested xp effect rep gains at max level? Avoid tabards and other junk.
Yeah. We investigated that but the design got a little complicated quickly. Does XP alone consume rest or rep too? (Source)
Solvable problems, but not trivially solvable at the time. (Source)

Thoughts of a Tinker class? If not now maybe down the road?
I've said before it depends on the treatment. Too easy for that class to be too wacky or precious. (Source)
A more steampunk vibe sounds cool to me. A dude in a mech having misfires that poop out springs and gears less so. (Source)
I don't know. Lucca from Chrono Trigger could work. A little bit of gnomish (tee hee) world enlarger goes a long way IMO. (Source)
But maybe one of the designers will come up with a pitch perfect design that blows us away someday. Shrug. (Source)

can we expect smaller ilvl increases after squish? from 155-160 etc. And how do you avoid large increase with LFR/Flex/N/H
The power deltas at max level would be preserved. They are important. Less important these days that BWL gear is a big upgrade. (Source)

how do ilvl increases work after squish to avoid peak numbers again?
It's something we might have to do again someday, but this would buy us several expansions. (Source)Saw bashiok saying he wasnt sure about tech reasons for it. i point to Ra-Den 25 getting bugged after health loop.
The numbers for e.g. boss health were not coded with such large numbers in mind. (Source)
We can change that of course but the point is we have to do something, either squish or suck up that engineering work. (Source)
(The armchair programmers who say our guys can do that trivially or are incompetent are just out of their league. No offense.) (Source)
Re: item squish. Programmers rarely tell you no. They tell you how long something will take and what you have to give up to get it. (Source)I really do think it would be refreshing to do 300 dps instead of 300,000. Much more grockable.
we are all about the grock. (Source)

are older raids going to be scaled accordingly to allow soloability still?
Yes. It is a requirement of squishing that it does not interfere with overpowering old dungeons or raids. (Source)

will we ever get an option to turn down other players spell effects seperate from ours?
Many spell effects in 5.3 and more in 5.4 look different for you than others. If that's not sufficient, we'll explore more. (Source)

Any update of being able to toggle off enchant graphics like we can with cloaks or helms? Many 'moggers would love this!
It is a goal. Discussing whether the right way is a "hide enchant" option or to let you mog enchants as well (even to none). (Source)

The amount of QQ over "models are ~25% done" is hurting my brain.
Also, shelved does not mean cancelled. (Source)Dance Studios and Dota style BG and Azshara Crater BG still on the table?
Yes. Things like aerial combat, less so. (Source)

What is the practical difference between "shelved" and "cancelled" if neither is "actively being worked on"?
Players are assuming the work is constant. Consider cars go fast sometimes and slow sometimes. (Source)
Character models require some of our most skilled artists and a lot of review. The first ones will take longer as well. (Source)
We could also generate them faster if we stopped all other art production, but that wouldn't be acceptable either. (Source)
The good news is this is something actively being worked on, not a shelved project like dance studio or abyssal maw. (Source)
Cancelled - unlikely to ever work on it. Shelved - nobody working on it at the moment, but we still like the idea. (Source)
You have to understand, our ambition always exceeds our reach. We have a lot of great ideas that we haven't gotten around to yet. (Source)

Any chance WoW will ever receive audio on all quests in the game? With voices of corresponding races. That would be so epic
It would be cool, but it slows down development a lot and makes it really hard to iterate on quests. (Source)
Personally, as a player I find I can read text much faster than I can listen to VO babble on though. (Source)

Siege Of Orgrimmar Art
Today we have some of the art done for Siege of Orgrimmar by Vergne Fanny, one of Blizzard's 3D Artists. The last one gives you an idea of how much work goes into something as small as a ground texture!

only about a quarter of characters reached max level? how does this stack up against previous expansions

MoP's faster content delivery has probably led to less exhaustion on mains, and therefore less activity on alts. I'm really feeling that, myself. I'm spending so much more time (as a percentage) on my main, my alts are really languishing this time around. I still can't decide if I approve or not

MoP's faster content delivery has probably led to less exhaustion on mains, and therefore less activity on alts. I'm really feeling that, myself. I'm spending so much more time (as a percentage) on my main, my alts are really languishing this time around. I still can't decide if I approve or not

MoP's faster content delivery has probably led to less exhaustion on mains, and therefore less activity on alts. I'm really feeling that, myself. I'm spending so much more time (as a percentage) on my main, my alts are really languishing this time around. I still can't decide if I approve or not

Yep I have 3 90's out of my original 8 85s. I really can't see the point on leveling them because I honestly won't use them. I only run world bosses on my current 90's that's all. =/

Rogues, still the lowest population. How about you toss us a bone Blizzard and give us some nice QoL fixes, like the simple CP on the character not the mob? Combat and Sub to have a simple SnD or Rupture refresh ability similar to Envenom for assassination.

All melee need some form of viable ranged damage, obviously not as strong as ranged but something other than throw, we have access to ST through talents but if you select that over Anticipation it's a huge loss. Anticipation is so incredible (and one of my favorite talents) but it makes the others completely worthless in PvE.

I don't agree that we need a full overhaul but we spend a lot of time spamming the same abilities with tons of time spent waiting, that needs to be fixed. That and the fact that we get slaughtered against mobs unless you overgear them, recup doesn't heal for garbage nor does leeching poison.

These numbers only reflect the percentage of rogues that we were tracking at the end of Cataclysm that were leveled from 85 to 90, not the current rogue representation in the level 90 population. (Though they are still likely the lowest there too)

Originally Posted by Darkrulerxxx

where is the monk stats?

All of the level 85 monks in Cataclysm are crying after reading your question.

Canada,we've got freedom too, except we don't pretend to be american when we travel.

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Originally Posted by Tierbook

only about a quarter of characters reached max level? how does this stack up against previous expansions

These numbers are useless.
Okay so I was more into leveling alts in previous xpacs, and I had to work more hours and had more irl commitments.
Trying to take some grain of truth from these overly simplified graphs and stats, well it's just not doable.
There is no representation, no xpac truth in these numbers. It's pretty coloured fluff for the sake of pretty coloured fluff.
You aren't going to find that 'less people played this class b/c of', b/c you don't know WHY they did or did not play/level x class.
Sorry, I know someone was expecting these to unlock the mysteries of wow, or use it to hammer someone over the head with 'see my class is underrepresented' or this proves x, but it's just useless to imagine they do.

"There are other sites on the internet designed for people to make friends or relationships. This isn't one" Darsithis Super Moderator
Proof that the mmochamp community can be a bitter and lonely place. What a shame.

These numbers are useless.
Okay so I was more into leveling alts in previous xpacs, and I had to work more hours and had more irl commitments.
Trying to take some grain of truth from these overly simplified graphs and stats, well it's just not doable.
There is no representation, no xpac truth in these numbers. It's pretty coloured fluff for the sake of pretty coloured fluff.
You aren't going to find that 'less people played this class b/c of', b/c you don't know WHY they did or did not play/level x class.
Sorry, I know someone was expecting these to unlock the mysteries of wow, or use it to hammer someone over the head with 'see my class is underrepresented' or this proves x, but it's just useless to imagine they do.

Actually, the charts do tell us something very useful. ~13% of the Mage population from Cata abandoned their Mages during MoP and leveled their Warlocks and Death Knights instead.

Vanilla WoW was a diamond in the rough. Burning Crusade cleared the rough away and polished that diamond up. During Lich King, that diamond cracked from being over polished and in Cataclysm that diamond was replaced with a cubic zirconia.

MoP's faster content delivery has probably led to less exhaustion on mains, and therefore less activity on alts. I'm really feeling that, myself. I'm spending so much more time (as a percentage) on my main, my alts are really languishing this time around. I still can't decide if I approve or not

this + many people cba to catch up with legendary quest on alts therefore they just dont lv them - + lvling in pandaria without flying from 85 is so tedious and boring when u do it on >6-7 char -_-

Originally Posted by blaxter

Mages have dropped the furthest because is the worst class this expansion, blizzard has not clue what to do with the specs and they don't even recognize the current fucked state

number of mages droped cause many int casters rerolled to locks with how overpovered they were since begining of mop -_-

You can use them to see that a larger proportion of the hunters leveled from 85 to 90 than mages.

Okay, but is it trying to insinuate that one class became more fun to play than another class during MoP? These charts are pretty much live bait for whiners complaining about their underrepresented class when it really is just numbers for the sake of numbers.